At the expanded Luby branch in Quincy, Illinois, Sales rep Rob Kuhn and customer Joe Genebacher from Quincy Recycle check out the new CASE tweel SSL airless tires. The company has added an addition that doubles its square footage.Plenty of business at Luby Equipment Services in Quincy, Illinois, has led the parent company to nearly double the square footing of the branch, adding four big new service bays and a crane to better handle the biggest equipment.
To celebrate the addition’s opening, the company recently threw an open house. The warm spring weather and midday timing had Jenny Swafford, sales and marketing coordinator for Luby, worried that contractors would be back at work and not want to take time off to come for lunch.
But turn out they did – in droves. “A lot of them broke away for an hour,” for lunch and networking, she says.
“It was great, we probably had 110, 120 people there, and it was beautiful day,” Rob Kuhn, Illinois territory sales rep, tells Equipment World.
Contractors ate barbecue sandwiches and had a chance at gift certificates and other door prizes from Case, Takeuchi, Eager Beaver Trailers and Virnig Attachments. The prizes included gift cards, toys, t-shirts and hats. There also was a drawing for a Yeti Cooler.
For some hands-on fun, contractors showed their chops in a “rodeo” competition which provided a stage for those operators’ most polished skills.
A contestant puts his operating skills to the test in a rodeo competition at Luby’s Quincy branch during a recent celebration for a new addition.
As construction picks up, Luby’s expands facility to about 5,800 square feet
Business is picking up at the Quincy branch, Kuhn says, with plenty of projects under way in its territory of west-central Illinois and northeast Missouri.
The new addition nearly doubles the space to about 5,800 square feet with the taller, larger shop featuring four bigger bays for large equipment and also the overhead crane. It adds about 2,500 square feet to the existing shop’s 3,300 square feet, he says.
The older shop area has enough space for about eight regular-sized bays, and now adding more space will help the dealership to better serve its customers, Kuhn points out.
Luby offers new, used and rental equipment. Manufacturers include CASE Construction, Takeuchi, Doosan, Indeco, Atlas Copco, Wacker Neuson, Virnig, Oshkosh Airport Products and trailers from Beaver and Towmaster.
Nationwide, Luby branches include six for construction contractors and two facilities for oil and gas fields (in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and West Buchanan, West Virginia). Headquarters are in Fenton, Missouri.
Contractors keep coming back to Quincy branch
At the Quincy branch, there’s been extremely low turnover. Kuhn and fellow sales rep Jerry Jansen have each worked at the branch for 20 years. The service managers, both road service technicians and the secretary have each been with Quincy for 25 years each. They provide “a wealth of knowledge and experience,” Kuhn notes.
Contractors seem to like coming back and “seeing the same faces year after year, ” which has helped this branch build trusted relationships, Kuhn says. “This means smooth, continuous relationships,” he notes.
Another of Luby’s strengths is its mechanics, whose certification is overseen by Case. Certified precision dealers must have a full-time machine control specialist on staff along with trained technicians and parts support, according to Case requirements.
The company provides contractors with equipment ranging from simple construction tools all the way up to the advanced 3D solutions. Sales people are trained in 3D and 3D systems – a necessity as their work and the industry continues to become more precise.
“We’ve been trained and actually leave Wednesday for three more days of training,” which will cover heavy side of Case Construction Equipment, Kuhn says. He’s going with Jansen, the northeast Missouri sales representative for Luby’s Quincy branch.
